mSATA SSD (Crucial M4) not showing in BIOS Boot Order

A

Acert93

Artist formerly known as Acert93
Legend
I hope someone here can assist.

I cannot select my new SSD in the boot order in the BIOS.

The information page in the BIOS recognizes the SSD but on the book configuration page it is absent.

  • Computer: Lenovo IdeaPad Y580 with a 1TB HDD (i7, 660M, 8GB RAM, etc.)
  • OS: Windows 8 64bit
  • SSD: Crucial M4 mSATA 256GB

Windows shows the drive as operating correctly. After some fiddling I did use disk management to populate the volume (238GB available) and assigned a drive.

I have created a recovery DVD.

I have also removed the HDD and rebooted a number of times.

Any advice?
 
Have you tried the ssd as the only drive are both drives on the same sata contoller have you tried the ssd in the hdd port?
could it be that the hdd has ahci and the ssd doesnt or vice versa

ps:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/283331-32-default-boot-drive

from the manual :
The computer does not start from a device you want.

• See the Bootmenu of the BIOS setup utility. Make sure that the Boot
Device Priorityin the BIOS setup utility is set so that the computer
starts from the device you want.

• Also make sure that the device from which the computer starts is
enabled. In the Bootmenu in the BIOS setup utility, make sure that
the device is included in the Boot Device Prioritylist.

• Press F12 when the Lenovo logo appears on the screen while the
computer is starting up to select the device you want the computer
starts from.
 
Davros said:
Have you tried the ssd as the only drive
Click to expand...

Yes.

are both drives on the same sata contoller have you tried the ssd in the hdd port?
Click to expand...

The SSD is mSATA and has a different port than the HDD (which plugs into the SATA port).

I have tried w/o the HDD plugged in,

could it be that the hdd has ahci and the ssd doesnt or vice versa
Click to expand...

I have not tried disabling AHCI yet as a quick browsing showed this bricking some systems.

• See the Bootmenu of the BIOS setup utility. Make sure that the Boot
Device Priorityin the BIOS setup utility is set so that the computer
starts from the device you want.
Click to expand...

Doesn't list it as an option on the priority screen,

BUT it is listed on the BIOS information page as recognized (HD0 I believe).

• Press F12 when the Lenovo logo appears on the screen while the
computer is starting up to select the device you want the computer
starts from.
Click to expand...

Does not list the SSD drive as a boot option. Tried w/ and w/o the HDD installed.
 
Maybe the BIOS is hard wired somewhat into considering the mSATA slot is only for a "cache" SSD. But I dunno if you have such options available in the BIOS (or UEFI).
Laptop vendors do sell variants with a mSATA cache SSD + HDD.

At worst you could try to migrate the C:\Users directory to the SSD ( presumably D: ), swap file and temporary files (setting the TEMP and TMP env variables to D:\temp?) and installing programs to the SSD.

The linux way out would be a /boot partition on the HDD, but OS residing on the SSD - can you "hack" Windows into using the stupid 100MB "system reserved partition" for that, I have no idea.
Easiest fix would be a BIOS update from Lenovo that fixes the insanity.
 
Let's assume I am an idiot.

Because maybe I am an idiot and missing something obvious--it has been a long time since I tried doing any of this.

I was sadly mistaken that I would pop in the new HDD, the BIOS would pick it up, and I would use my Win8 recovery disk to re-install or at worse copy a CLONED drive over. At this point I cannot even get the BIOS to see the drive on the BOOT screen but the INFO screen in the BIOS sees the drive. Frustrating.

I booted to Win8 on the HDD where Win8 is installed (not the SSD). I ran the DISK RECOVERY program and created both a DVD (less than 500MB) and then also used a USB HDD and did a full recovery (over 20GB).

I also tried cloning to the SSD (maybe I did this wrong?). I can see the M4 mSATA drive in Windows8 and can copy/open files on it. The challenge has been getting it to appear as a BOOT Drive.

-----------------------------
(1) Tried Following LenBlazer from the Lenovo forum link
-----------------------------
1. Removed hdd.
2. Start up and go to bios and set to AHCI and UEFI.
3. Insert Installer (DVD to ODD or plug USB into port)
4. Save settings and exit.
5. Press F12 or whatever to access the boot menu. Select the required installer drive using kb arrow keys. Then press Enter key.
6. Follow instruction until ask where to install your OS. Select the ssd.

==>This is where I get stuck. No matter what I cannot select the SSD.

-----------------------------
(2) I formatted from the command promt
-----------------------------
I formatted the drive from the command prompt using these steps:

diskpart
list disk
select disk 0
clean
convert gpt
create partition primary
select partion 1
format fs=ntfs quick label=system
assign letter=c
exit

-----------------------------
(3) BIOS Screen Shots
-----------------------------

BIOS version 5DCN89WW (v8.00)
InsydeH20 Setup Utility

Bios Tab 1 Information (note the M4 is listed)
https://skydrive.live.com/#cid=6124580255C5A1BE&id=6124580255C5A1BE!211

Bios Tab 2 Configuration
https://skydrive.live.com/#cid=6124580255C5A1BE&id=6124580255C5A1BE!210

Bios Tab 3 Security
https://skydrive.live.com/#cid=6124580255C5A1BE&id=6124580255C5A1BE!212

Bios Tab 4 Boot (note the M4 will not show on this tab)
https://skydrive.live.com/#cid=6124580255C5A1BE&id=6124580255C5A1BE!213

Bios Tab 5 Exit (I have tried toggling from Win8 to OtherOS)
https://skydrive.live.com/#cid=6124580255C5A1BE&id=6124580255C5A1BE!214


Maybe I am missing something obvious.

After I format the drive I would think the BIOS would pick it up as a valid drive.

There are people on the Lenovo, on the Anandtech, and Crucial forums who all have the M4 mSATA SSD 256GB working on the Lenovo Y580.

Can you say user error?
 
Wow, you can boot from ipv6.

I can see on the laptop's support page that the BIOS they offer to download is version 5DCN40WW, not the same as yours : 5DCN89WW. That is weird, is your BIOS more recent?, anyway you can still try the one they have on the page, dump your current BIOS before flashing the new one if you want to be able to go back.
 
Blazkowicz said:
Wow, you can boot from ipv6.

I can see on the laptop's support page that the BIOS they offer to download is version 5DCN40WW, not the same as yours : 5DCN89WW. That is weird, is your BIOS more recent?, anyway you can still try the one they have on the page, dump your current BIOS before flashing the new one if you want to be able to go back.
Click to expand...

I am reading up on how to dump a copy of the BIOS--based on the Lenovo forum they don't make this easy.

I tried disabling secure boot, but that did not work.

If I go to "Other OS" and change the boot order to legacy (no UEFI) the M4 WILL show on the boot order but when the system boots it says it is not there, check the cable and the Win8 restore cannot see the drive. Folks on the Anand/Crucial/Lenovo sites have this exact config (maybe different BIOS) and are using AHCI/UEFI with no issues.

So I may trying flashing the BIOS if I can ensure I can get a good dump of the current version as it is NOT available online.

Ps- Gotta love the no Win8 standard no ISO. I have read this possibly could be simpler (i.e. taking out the clone steps/issues) but alas I am stuck with only the Windows 8 recovery disk.

EDIT: That bios is Windows 7 only and not for the i7 3630qm processors. Egads this is getting stupid difficult!!
 
But the guy that asks on the forum has 5DCN90WW, v8.0.1. There might exist newer versions.

Phone support tells him to get lost ("we'll send an e-mail to engineering team", "post on the forum").
And this :

After some research I have discovered that there was a hardware change when they started releasing Windows 8 on the Y580. It looks like BIOS for the old hardware is listed under Windows 7 and not some hardware identifier and is not compatible with the hardware released with Windows 8. Why the BIOS it was categorized under an OS and not hardware reversion is beyond me. I’m sure there are plenty of people who are taking Windows 7 machines and upgrading to Windows 8 and vice versa.
Click to expand...

This would help understanding that "Windows 7" and "Windows 8" BIOS nonsense.

Also, their file : http://download.lenovo.com/consumer/mobiles/5dcn40ww.exe
I tried unpacking it but it's not an archive.. just a Windows binary, which I find quite heinous if you're not using Windows or don't have it installed (or can't boot it because of the bug you have)
So I think that's support fuck up and I thought Lenovo would be better (I remember going to IBM's site and downloading manuals, drivers, getting info for insanely outdated stuff like the PS/2 from the 80s I had, any CRT monitor, the stupid dual pentium pro rig I played with)

I'm maybe too used to desktop motherboards you buy yourself, they tend to all offer all BIOS versions to download and I end up some way or another with the raw BIOS image and DOS flashing program.
 
Egads!!

Crucial has responded to me and said I need to initialize the drive as MBR and clone over my OS ... but ... since it is on a different size drive (and changing the size / type voids my Win copy per Lenovo) and as Crucial says it is probably and issue so I need to do a fresh install via an ISO I was told to go buy a new copy of Windows and "it should work. If it doesn't please consult the knowledge base." Really? And the final line really got me, "Please contact our sales staff at blah blah blah if you are interested in our other products." Uhm, I want the one I bought to work first? Without buying a new copy of Windows?

After a superficial digging it seems OEM customers do not get ISOs.

This just gets better and better and better.
 
Reminds me of the crap I went through with Hitachi
As you know sata2 drives dont work on sata1 boards. Most drives deal with this by having a jumper on the drive to set it to sata1 mode, but this is too easy for the genius's at Hitachi.
They decided its much easier to have a program that you run to change the mode the program also does many other things like low level format via switches allowing the unexperienced to totally f** up their drive.

So you run the program, Oh wait no you dont because again that would be far too easy for the genius's at Hitachi. No you download a bootable floppy image because everyone has a floppy drive dont they.

You install a floppy drive, boot the image, select your drive, Oh wait no you dont select your drive why? Because sata2 drives are incompatible with sata1 boards and the drive isnt detected.

So the only people who can change the drive to sata1 are people with sata2 boards, you know the people who have no reason to change a sata2 drive to sata1 :(
 
Acert93 said:
Egads!!

Crucial has responded to me and said I need to initialize the drive as MBR and clone over my OS ... but ... since it is on a different size drive (and changing the size / type voids my Win copy per Lenovo) and as Crucial says it is probably and issue so I need to do a fresh install via an ISO I was told to go buy a new copy of Windows and "it should work. If it doesn't please consult the knowledge base." Really? And the final line really got me, "Please contact our sales staff at blah blah blah if you are interested in our other products." Uhm, I want the one I bought to work first? Without buying a new copy of Windows?

After a superficial digging it seems OEM customers do not get ISOs.

This just gets better and better and better.
Click to expand...

OK, let's see if I can try to help you out a bit here.

1. You need to pare down the contents of your boot drive to below the available space on the Crucial M4 so that we can clone it. This is most easily done if you have an external drive you can hook up. But can be done with just the drives in the laptop if needed. Just happens to be a PITA if you can't move files to an external drive temporarily. For a boot drive SSD, I recommend also leaving at least 20-25% spare space in order to extend the longevity of the drive (allows it to better manage wear leveling).

2. After you do that you can clone the drive depending on how you are doing it. Some clone programs don't care about the size of the partition and some do. If it cares about the size of the partition you can use the Disk Management tool to shrink the partition to slightly smaller than the SSD. After cloning you can then extend it to the full size you want.

3. This is important. You also need to clone the "System Reserved" partition (no drive letter) or Windows won't boot. Basically you have to clone the "System Reserved" partition as well as your "C:" partition.

And yes, the drive has to be MBR or Windows can't boot off of it. It's weird that it wasn't already MBR. GPT is usually only used for drives larger than 2 TB as MBR doesn't natively support drives larger than that.

So make sure you convert it to MBR before cloning as that has to be done while there are no partitions on the drive.

BTW - having Windows Home Server makes stuff like this a lot easier. /me loves my WHS machine. :)

Regards,
SB
 
Thanks guys.

After some more fiddling I think I identified how to resolve. I will post on this soon... I hope this works :)
 
UPDATE: Solved!

The TLDR version: I purchased Paragon Disk Copy 12 Professional ($20 on sale) and used the OS to SSD migration tool. It aligned and resized partitions and everything works exceedingly well (7 second boot, 10 seconds to desktop). If not on sale just get the “OS to SSD” software if moving the drive is all you need to do ($20, sometimes goes on sale).

So I took all the advice I was getting, including Crucials. Initializing via the processes they recommended (what I did previously but I followed their exact steps) did not make the drive selectable by the Boot Order and refused to be seen by Windows Recovery. I went back through and made sure I used the ‘Active’ command in the manual format and partitioning (I had done this but left that out of my notes I posted). Still nothing. I tried switching over to Legacy as Crucial suggested but that posed an issue with getting the data from a GPT drive to an MBR formatted SSD, especially as the Lenovo comes with a default 5 partitions (only 1 with a drive letter). The kicker was they were suggesting a clean instead from an ISO / DVD which Lenovo does NOT offer.

After some more reading I decided to give Macrium Reflect another go as I believe I did it wrong. Namely I grabbed the wrong partition and left out the EFI data partition. So I moved all 5 partitions this time. Guess what?

Good News: The SSD was now viewable in the Bios Boot Order!

Bad News: Windows crashed on start up.

I was prepared for this as some users have reported issues—Reflect works for some, not for others. (Some claim this is an alignment issue; Reflect’s knowledge base says this shouldn’t be an issue—I may have done something wrong?) I had seen quite a few people who had success with Paragon products, specifically an Amazon.com review of the same M4 mSATA I bought who had the same issues I did, so I decided to give it a chance. I bought the Drive Copy 12 version as it includes the “OS to SSD” tools and seeing as they were the same price (sale) I picked up the more robust software. But all you need is the “Paragon Migrate OS to SSD 3.0” which you have to hunt to find on their site (easier to google it). The rest was very simple.

# I did the Lenovo One Key Recovery to get the Y580 back into its base configuration.

# Downloaded all the Windows 8 updates.

# Made a new recovery drive.

# I ordered the Paragon Disk Copy software.

# Downloaded the software.

# Created the WinPE DVD.

# Opened Disk Copy and ran the OS to SSD Wizard.

# Restarted the Y580 and in the BIOS the M4 mSATA was *available* in the Boot Order.

# Set the M4 as the 1st boot option, moved the HDD to last option, saved, shut down, and removed the HDD.

# Started and Booted into Windows without any issues.

A week’s worth of testing and the machine works excellent. No more than 7 seconds to the log in from a cold boot and 10 seconds to the desktop at most. Everything is speed up substantially. The laptop was quick before, but now everything is instantly snappy.

Thank you for EVERYONE’S help. MUCH APPRECIATED!!

Clearly I was must have made some disk formatting/partitioning errors along the way; the lack of an ISO / Windows Install made this extra complicated as the Windows recovery could not see the drive (again, probably because I did not format/partition correctly). As being booted into Windows 8 I could see the M4 (just not select it in the BIOS as a bootable drive) I have a suspicion a Windows 8 install disk would have seen the drive without issue.

Now off to find a reputable guide into what I should, and shouldn’t do, to optimize the system to run well with the SSD and avoid unnecessary wear and tear.
 
Glad to see that you got it all resolved. :)

And yup, migrating a drive can definitely be a lot more troublesome than just installing a new copy if you don't know the ins and outs.

It's interesting that your machine's UEFI actually checks to see if a drive is actually bootable before allowing you to select it as a boot drive. Desktop MB's and heck most laptops I've used don't bother to check and will just happily allow you to choose a non-bootable drive as the boot drive.

Regards,
SB
 
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